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Ultimate Home Tour: The Living Room

For a Georgian-style farmhouse turned country weekend home in Millbrook, Conn., Greg Jordan transformed a former ballroom into an antiques-filled living room. “The space used to be very feminine and was overwhelmed with pale colors. No one ever went in there,” the interior designer recalls. “So when the family decided to redecorate the space, they wanted a complete change—something gutsy and masculine.”

Jordan filled the room with a combination of 18th-century English sofas reupholstered with Scalamandré silk velvet and lamps made from antique Chinese jars. “Regardless of the style, I always design rooms that can really be lived in and used,” says the New York designer, who has just opened a Los Angeles showroom. “The room is luxurious, but it also gets a lot of use—the children love to jump on the sofas.”

Jordan used Clarence House’s silk damask wallcoverings to provide a dramatic backdrop for the family’s art collection, which includes portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Thomas Lawrence. He also created a visual biography of the family with an array of photographs on the piano.

Although the clients’ favorite hue of dark orange rules the palette, Jordan kept it from overwhelming the room by contrasting the jewel-toned walls and velvet curtains with a bright white plaster molded ceiling. In the end, Jordan not only changed the room, but spread his design pizzazz to the rest of the house. “The design of this room had quite an influence on them,” he says. “After trying something bold in here, they decided to paint the entryway tangerine.”